Woe to the man who offends a small child!

You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome and good for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you...

So against the grain I serve to produce events and do what’s irrational because I am commanded to. For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy....

Oh, I have always been proud, I always wanted all or nothing! You see it was just because I am not one who will accept half a happiness, but always wanted all

The queen who mended her stockings in prison must have looked every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levees.

Because everyone is guilty for everyone else. For all the ‘wee ones,’ because there are little children and big children. All people are ‘wee ones.’ And I’ll go for all of them, because there must...

And what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort

If it could come about that each of us were to describe his innermost secrets –secrets which one would hesitate to tell not only to people at large, but even to one’s closest friends, nay,...

For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.

But how could you live and have no story to tell?

Obedience, fasting, and prayer are laughed at, yet only through them lies the way to real true freedom. I cut off my superfluous and unnecessary desires, I subdue my proud and wanton will and chastise...

They say, the sun brings life to the world. The sun will rise and look is it not a corpse? Everything is dead and there are corpses everywhere. Just people and around them silence__that is...

I want peace; yes, I’d sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so long as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go without...

Bah! You want to hear the vilest thing a man’s done and you want him to be a hero at the same time!

There are crimes that are truly uncomely. With crimes, whatever they may be, the more blood, the more horror there is, the more imposing they are, the more picturesque, so to speak, but there are...

If I did not believe in life, if I were to lose faith in the woman I love, if I were to lose faith in the order of things, even if I were to become...

Well, sir, it is precisely my notion that one sees and learns most of all by observing our younger generations.

Well, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like,” Porfiry Petrovitch began again, “but I can’t resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one...

Instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest forever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic.

Bezrazložan i besciljan nemir u sadašnjosti, a u budućnosti tek neprekidne žrtve kojima neće ništa postići – eto što ga čeka na ovome svijetu. I što vrijedi što će mu za osam godina biti tek...

Do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their mind?

Eshte e mire letersia, Varenjka, shume e mire eshte. U binda diten e trete te vizitave. Gje me peshe. Ua forcon zemren njerezve, u meson si te jetojne. C’nuk thuhet ne ato shkrime.

And so these refined parents rejected their five-year-old girl to all kinds of torture. They beat her, kicked her, flogged her, for no reason that they themselves knew of. The child’s whole body was covered...

I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou...

Remember young man, unceasingly,’ Father Paissy began, without preface, ‘that the science of this world, which has become a great power, has, especially in the last century, analysed everything divine handed down to us in...

Compassion is the chief law of human existence.

For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, ‘I am doing God’s will on earth.’ All the righteous, all the saints, all the...

No man lives, can live, without having some object in view, and making efforts to attain that object. But when object there is none, and hope is entirely fled, anguish often turns a man into...

Rakitin was dishonest and was decidedly unaware of it; that, on the contrary, knowing that he wouldn’t steal money from the table, he ultimately considered himself a man of the highest integrity.

[T]hat they may believe you, you must say it as obscurely as possible, just like that, simply in hints. You must only give them a peep of the truth, just enough to tantalize them. They’ll...

If I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly never have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous conditions.

A dream is a strange thing. Pictures appear with terrifying clarity, the minutest details engraved like pieces of jewelry, and yet we leap unawares through huge abysses of time and space. Dreams seem to be...

I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.

You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won’t be wiser?

We are all happy if we but knew it.

But the conquest of fear was what fascinated them. The continual ecstasy of vanquishing and the consciousness that no one could vanquish them was what attracted them.

Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you...

Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child’s prayer to ‘dear, kind God’! I say nothing of the sufferings of grown-up people, they have eaten the apple, damn them, and the devil...

The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.

They suffer, of course… but then they live, they live a real life, not a fantastic one, for suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it?

Sincere and unspiteful laughter is mirth, but where is there any mirth in our time, and do people know how to be mirthful?… A man’s mirth is a feature that gives away the whole man,...

I am leaving now; but know, Katerina Ivanovna, that you indeed love only him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him. That is your strain. You precisely love him as he...

The sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices

A cultivated and decent man cannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself, and without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.

Entre as recordações de cada pessoa, há coisas que ela não conta para qualquer um, somente para os amigos. Há também aquelas que ela não conta nem para os amigos, somente para sim mesma, e...

I will put up with any mockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.

Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don’t say that you’ve wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a...

It’s God that’s worrying me. That’s the only thing that’s worrying me. What if He doesn’t exist? What if Rakitin’s right -that it’s an idea made up by men? Then, if He doesn’t exist, man...

In the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading. I tried to stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions. And the only external means I...

I am a fool with a heart but no brains, and you are a fool with brains but no heart; and we’re both unhappy, and we both suffer.